The Three Pendeltons and What They Found
by girl from the lake cottage
Summary: An excursion into the lives of Professor Digory Kirke's three servants - Ivy, Margaret, and Betty - and what they might have thought of the four strange Pevensie children...


_I've decided that the only people I can write about are the ones that are usually not written about at all, so I give you a story of Ivy, Margaret, and Betty, the three servants of Professor Kirke in LLW who "don't come into the story much". But I was thinking about what the other inhabitants of the Kirke household must have thought of the children once they returned from Narnia. The names are all the creation of C. S. Lewis, as are the amazing house the Professor lives in and the children who explore it._

Ivy was the oldest and the first of the Pendelton sisters to be hired by Mrs. Macready to work at the old Kirke country house. At twenty-two she had done more work in her life than most do by the time they reach the age of forty, and she was not about to stop. Her mother had died right before Ivy's twelfth birthday, and the task of raising her younger sisters immediately fell to Ivy. Not to mention taking care of the family's small cottage nestled in the hills of the English countryside. The house was not necessarily in shambles, but it was small and old and needed a great deal of care. So after finishing primary school, Ivy stayed home to cook and clean and make sure her father went to work each morning without any holes in his trousers or tears in his shirts. Margy and Betty were in school by then, so she didn't have to care for any babies. But it was a lot of work for a twelve year old girl to care for an entire household on her own, and six years later, when the opportunity for escape presented itself, Ivy gladly accepted.

After cleaning and cooking for the old Professor for two years, Mrs. Macready recognized that it would probably help Ivy to have at least one companion in work. So Margy, by then eighteen, was taken on as well. Margy had done her best to care for the Pendelton home after Ivy had left, but spent so much of her time daydreaming about knights in shining armor that the house was not quite as stable as it had been when Ivy was still there. Margy figured that working at the big house would be a wonderful adventure, but for the first few months she was regulated to organizing the attic, which was a project that would take a whole army of servants months to complete, not to mention one. And it also resulted in Margy being covered in dust nearly all of the time.

Two years after Margy was hired, the war broke out, and the Pendelton's father decided that he could best serve himself by serving his country, so he joined the forces and left seventeen year old Betty behind. Ivy (by then twenty two) and Margaret (then twenty) did not want to see their sister all alone in the ramshackle cottage, so they convinced Professor Kirke's housekeeper to let Elizabeth work as well. So it was the summer of 1940 when all three of the Pendelton sisters were together again, working for the Professor and his housekeeper. And it was one day that summer that the girls noticed that not everything was as normal as it seemed in one of the back rooms of the country house, a room that held nothing but an old wooden wardrobe with a looking glass in the door…

* * *

Ivy was polishing an old suit of armor when she heard the footsteps of the children coming down the hall. Smiling, she turned to greet them but was stopped by the looks on their faces.

"What's wrong, children? You look as though you think I'm a ghost!" she laughed as she stood up and walked over to the doorway where the four Pevensie siblings had stopped. "Lucy, have you been crying?" she asked as she noticed a tear trickling down the youngest girl's face.

Lucy reached up and wiped at her eyes.

"N-n-no," the little girl whispered, looking up at her brothers and sister. "Just surprised, that's all."

Edmund, who usually wore a smirk the size of the English Channel, blinked his eyes rapidly, as if to ward off tears of his own, and even Peter and Susan looked stunned into silence.

Ivy stepped back and took a good long look at all four of them, each looking as sober as the others. "Well, I know that Betty just baked a batch of gingerbread, so why don't you run down to the kitchen and have a bit to eat. I think that might cheer you all up."

Susan was the only one who managed a smile as she thanked Ivy and pushed her brothers and sister out of the room. Ivy shook her head and picked up her polishing rag. _I wonder what's gotten into those children_, she thought to herself. _They were only in the wardrobe room for five minutes, and out they come as sad as orphans. _Ivy usually was not the curious Pendleton, but this incident had her flummoxed. What _had_ those children done?

Peeking into the wardrobe room, Ivy didn't see anything amiss. She was just about to open the door of the wardrobe when two voices behind her made her jump.

"I say Ivy, did you see the children? They looked plum wore out, and my gingerbread didn't even make Lucy smile," said Betty as she entered the room. Margy was close behind, wiping her hands on her apron, covered in dust as usual.

"Margy, have you been up in the attic again?" Ivy asked her middle sister, shaking her head and smiling. Turning to Betty, she laughed. "Peter's only four years younger than you, so I'd watch who you call a child, Bets."

Margy sneezed. "Yes, I've been up above again. There has to be _something_ thrilling up there, I just know it. Maybe an ancient diary of some long lost princess, or the wedding gown of the Professor's great-great-great grandmother, or some other utterly romantic artifact." She sighed, which only caused her to sneeze again and her sisters to start laughing. Margy spent almost all of her free time either dreaming she was the heroine in _Rebecca_, a picture that had come out in the spring, or imagining a prince who would ride up on his white horse and sweep her off her feet.

Once she got over laughing at her sister, Betty glared at Ivy. "Compared to Margy, I'm _very_ far beyond childhood, thank you very much. But didn't you see them? I thought I heard them come up here earlier. Even Evil Edmund," this earned her a glare from her older sisters. "What, you know he's been positively nasty to me ever since they arrived! But even Ed looked, well, devastated! I ran up to get Margy because I think that this calls for a Pendelton Sisters' Meeting!"

"Let's just hope that Mrs. Macready doesn't find us shirking again," said Ivy, remembering the last time the sisters had held an emergency meeting. The housekeeper was a little less than pleased to find the girls discussing Margy's latest admirer in the pantry.

Margy shook her head. "She won't. I saw her leading a group from somewhere on a tour around the grounds. She probably won't be inside for about an hour. Now tell me, sister dear, what are you doing inside of the wardrobe room?"

Ivy looked at her sisters. "This is where they were before they came out."

"What?" asked Betty, a puzzled look on her face. "Iv, you're not making any sense."

"I mean that they went in here, running past me so fast I hardly noticed them, and five minutes later came out in tears. Now what on earth do you think could have happened?"

Betty smirked. "Edmund probably said something mean to all of them, and then Peter probably beat him up, and then the girls started crying."

"But Bets," Margy interrupted, "you said that they looked devastated. Sibling fights usually don't leave people looking devastated."

"Margy's right, Betty. I think I would have heard them if they were fighting. But they didn't make a sound," observed Ivy, who looked thoughtfully around the room. "Something else had to have happened."

"Well then," Betty pursed her lips, "the only thing in here is the wardrobe, so why don't we look inside of it." She went over and pried open the door.

"Ugh," groaned Margy as she peered into the darkness. "The mothballs I put in here last week smell like the dickens. Hold your breath, girls. It's not pleasant. Who wants to go in first?"

Betty pointed to Ivy, who shrugged and stepped into the rack of fur coats, her sisters following. It was a tight fit, but they did all manage to make it inside. "Nothing here to make me cry," said Betty. Margy was quiet for a moment, and then turned to her sisters, who could make out a puzzled look on her face in the dim light.

"I could promise you that there were four more coats in here when I put in those mothballs," she said, a question in her voice. "See this empty space at the end here? There were coats hanging there last I checked. The children didn't come out with coats on, did they?"

Ivy shook her head. "No. And it's the middle of June. What would they want with fur coats?" She shuffled her feet a little, and heard some rustling sounds come from the floor. Betty squealed.

"Mice?"

Ivy carefully knelt down, and felt around her feet. "No, just some leaves." She stepped out of the wardrobe, blinking against the sun shining through the window. Looking down at the leaves in her hand, she frowned. "Girls, we don't have trees like this around here, do we? I've never seen a leaf like this one before." She held it out for her sisters to inspect.

"Me neither," agreed Margy, taking the thin leaves into her hands. They were shaped almost like little bells, and made her think of spring and flowers and singing.

"It's strange that they are still green," said Betty, picking up a single leaf and examining it closely. "You'd think they would have dried up or crumbled in that dark closet."

"But where did they come from?" asked Margy quietly. "They weren't there last week. I cleaned out that closet thoroughly, and Macready even inspected it before I re-hung the coats."

Ivy took the leaves and placed them in her pocket. "Well Margy, I think we've found a mystery for your imagination to solve. Where did these leaves come from and what did the Pevensies have to do with it?" The three sisters just stood in the center of the room for a moment, looking at each other. Suddenly they heard the housekeeper's voice ringing through the room. The girls jumped, giggling a little.

Betty sighed. "Time to get back to work. We don't want the Macready on our case again. But if that Edmund says one more negative thing about my cooking all he'll be getting from me is toast and milk," she grumbled as she left the room to head back to the kitchens. Ivy picked up her polishing rag and, with a quick glance at Margy, quietly went back to the armor room to finish on the knight she had been cleaning.

But Margy turned to face the wardrobe and went over to it one more time, running her hand up and down the smooth wood. "I bet you hold a secret," she whispered. "I don't know if I'll ever find out what it is, but I'm glad you let the children know. There's probably a whole world inside of you, just waiting to be discovered…"

* * *


End file.
